Penobscot Expedition

The Penobscot Expedition was a 44-ship American naval armada during the Revolutionary War assembled by the Provincial Congress of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The flotilla of 19 warships and 25 support vessels sailed from Boston on July 19, 1779 for the upper Penobscot Bay in the District of Maine carrying an expeditionary force of more than 1,000 American colonial marines and militiamen. Also included was a 100-man artillery detachment under the command of Lt. Colonel Paul Revere.

The Expedition's goal was to reclaim control of mid-coast Maine from the British who had captured it a month earlier, naming the newly British territory New Ireland. It was the largest American naval expedition of the war. The fighting took place on land and at sea around the mouth of the Penobscot and Bagaduce Rivers at Castine, Maine over a period of three weeks in July and August. The Expedition was the United States' worst naval defeat until Pearl Harbor 162 years later, in 1941.

Wikipedia